We Shine Like A Burning Star
by fairy tale echo
Summary: They say the sun is sometimes eclipsed by the moon. Y'know I don't see you when she walks in the room.


"They say the sun is sometimes eclipsed by the moon  
Y'know I don't see you when she walks in the room."  
-U2 _The Fly_

_then_

Rachel has returned from Zanzibar or Detroit or Syria or wherever it was that she'd taken herself off to last and is here, again, in your arms.

"_This feels good, familiar,_" you think to yourself, as she curls up beside you, warm and loose from a few too many cups of toxic Founder's Day punch. She is everything she has always been to you, and that is everything you thought you'd ever want.

Rachel is running her hands along your chest, slowly. She tells you that she missed you, that she thought of you when shells were firing over her head and a little house made of dirt rattled from explosions. She whispers your name in kisses up and down your stomach, moving her mouth lower and lower.

"_Good, good, good,"_ your mind chants. All you want is to _feel_: to feel her hands wrapped around you, to feel her hair in a soft curtain surrounding your upper thighs, to feel her mouth all over you.

But even as your body responds, you can't stop thinking.

_"Please,"_ you beg your mind _"please don't."_

But you can't stop. You can't stop your mental reaction anymore than you can stop your physical one.

Rachel is not everything you want, not anymore and maybe not ever. You know that with a sudden, fierce clarity, in a way you have known few things in your life.

Rachel is not a game of cards on a table-top. Rachel is not a winter's night drive, concern swallowing down a queasiness about hospitals. Rachel is not clear blue eyes and pouty, red lips, a rambling whine, an earnest plea. Rachel is not that secret piece of newspaper tucked into your wallet, folded a hundred times against the hard reality of your life, afraid to even dare to desire.

_Rachel is not Lorelai._

It is that simple, that clear, that helplessly hopeless.

_Rachel is not Lorelai._

It is your last lucid thought before you see stars and the burning of the Star's Hollow bonfire behind your eyes and you push up, up, up into Rachel's mouth and a blank oblivion.

_now_

That first night, what you most expect is that you and Lorelai will be nervous and awkward with each other, that after all these years of friendship you won't know where to put your hands on each other, how to touch as lovers and not friends.

That isn't a problem at all.

From the moment you walk through your apartment door, Lorelai clutching a bottle of champagne that Maisy had insisted the two of you take, everything feels suddenly electric and possible.

You put the champagne in ice while Lorelai rhapsodizes about Sniffy's and you wonder if she can hear your heart hammering in your chest from across the damn apartment, or if it's just in your own ears that your blood is racing so quickly that you feel a little faint.

Lorelai has crossed the apartment to meet you in your kitchen, and you watch her watch a single drop of water trickle down the side of the ice bucket, her eyes wide and the smallest bit of her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth, and it occurs to you that this may be the most erotic moment of your life.

Then that voice, that agonizingly relentless voice of hers, has dropped to a husky pitch and she steps towards you and says, coy smile on her face, "I've been waiting all summer for this."

There are a hundred things your mind wants to say in this moment. You want, suddenly, to be calm and rational about it - you don't want this woman running off on you, after all, she's been known to do that. But it's too late, because you showed her that piece of paper, folded against the hands of the world, and she knows now.

And besides you're too fucking tired of hiding.

"I've been waiting," you tell her slowly, encircling her waist between your hands, opening your fingers wide so they span from the tips of her hips to the bottom of her breasts, pulling her to you, "all my life for this."

She shudders against your chest and you think about that night on the Dragonfly's porch, your arms wrapped around each other and your mouths touching for the first time.

As if she is reading your mind, the next dazed words out of her mouth are, "Stand still." It's as if she wants to preserve this second forever.

But you don't stand still, because it feels like that is what you've been doing your whole life and you're sick to death of it. You can't stand still, with Lorelai Gilmore in your kitchen and your arms and your life, open and inviting, watching ice melt.

Your hands, your mouths, your entire bodies, it seems, have always known how to be more than friends.

When Lorelai starts a sloppy trail of kisses down your stomach, giggling as if this is the most delicious thing she has ever done, you find that you have lost the ability to swallow. You fear that in a moment or two, when her mouth makes full contact on your exposed skin, you are going to forget how to breathe and will seize up and die, right there under her delicate hands and hot mouth.

Then you don't fear or think or process anything at all, because the whole world has stopped on its axis as Lorelai takes you into her mouth. Your mind comes to a grinding halt as a tide of sensation rolls over you: _feral need, aching heat, every wish you never made_.

You don't even realize that you're muttering at first, but then you hear yourself, as if from a long distance away.

_"Can't, can't, can't,"_ you are repeating it over and over, like a parrot stuck on repeat.

If this were the movies this would be an dramatic moment charged with undertones. Your _can't_ would mean something along the lines of "Can't _take any more, get up here!_" or "Can't _stop myself, you're so amazing!_" But that's not what your can't means at all.

With that last of your cognitive abilities you realize that your _can't_ is desperate, and not the good kind, because it is saying to Lorelai, "_I can't believe this is actually happening. With you. To me. With_ us."

And that's when Lorelai turns her eyes up to your face, eyelashes fluttering, and your gazes lock. She is mischievous and seductive and you feel sure, certain, that this is **exactly** what got Adam kicked out of the garden, this knowledge. Lorelai's eyes seem knowing as she reaches up to lace her fingers through yours.

She lifts her mouth from you for the briefest of seconds, never breaking your gaze, and murmurs a single word against your skin, as if she understands all the things you've never been able to tell her. _"Can."_

She squeezes your hands reassuringly and dips her head down again.

It is the most truthful moment of your life and you have never felt so deliriously happy and ecstatically alive.

_then_

Rachel is a morning person, just like you. When you go downstairs to receive the bread deliveries and make small talk with the truck drivers, Rachel slips out of bed with a sunny grin and sidles her way to your stove. She starts breakfast for the two of you, cracking eggs with a resounding crack, before the sun is even up.

When you return to your apartment, you pause for a minute in the doorway, staring at the way Rachel's hair is a messy bun on the top of her head, listening to her hum as she beats the eggs. She is wearing the loose, long top of a pair of pajamas she bought in Morocco, the green silk brushes the tops of her knees, swaying in time with her movements.

She's back. She's back and she missed you and she hopped a plane for no reason and she's here and she wants to be with you and everything, _everything_, is going to be fine. You wait for a sense of peace to come, for the moment when you'll know that this is what you've been waiting for, hoping for, since her first postcard arrived in your mail.

It doesn't come. Instead, there is a hollow space somewhere between the pit of your stomach and the bottom of your heart.

Rachel turns to you then, senses you watching her, and you see the morning sunlight filter from the small window behind her, lighting up her face. She gives you her lopsided grin and says, waving her spatula, "Morning."

The hollow space aches.

It takes you less than five large steps to cross the kitchen and take Rachel in your arms. She mutters a surprised noise as the spatula hits the ground, but her arms wrap around your neck eagerly.

Each kiss feels like it is going to bruise both of you, but she doesn't mind and neither do you, it just makes you lean harder into her, demanding more. Her voice is a triumphant declaration. "Luke!"

You know this is what she had been expecting from you last night and she doesn't find it odd that you are offering it this morning.

You could take her right there, right in that second, on your kitchen counter top, but this is not that feeling and Rachel isn't that woman. This isn't about the irresistibility of the moment, no, it's about the hollow space that won't ever leave your chest, the need, if only for a second, to fill it up with some sensation.

You are not surprised when Rachel bites your neck (although you pray that won't leave a mark, you would literally never hear the end of that.) and groans into your ear, nibbling on your earlobe. "Baby," she says lowly, pushing you awkwardly to the kitchen floor "I was wondering when we were going to get to this."

The floor is cold, it's barely dawn after all. But you don't feel it, you don't feel anything except Rachel's sudden weight on you. She hitches up the silk top and then you hear the metallic click of your zipper as she yanks it down. No time for getting clothes off, no time at all, it has to be _right now_ and she knows it.

Fisting your hands in the silk, Rachel is pushing herself down, rocking forward. She slams her palms onto the floor beside your head and clenches tightly around you. And there it is, _finally_, there it is, a moment of no thought at all, just feeling: feeling Rachel around you, tighter than you remember, feeling her groan and feeling her respond. 

You open your eyes to look at her and see that she has her eyes closed and is biting her lips so hard it looks like she might bite through. The silk is warm beneath your fingers and you think that you've finally managed to just be right here with not thinking or regret or wondering.

And then your vision blurs, for only a fraction of a tenth of second, but when it does you don't see Rachel, on top of you, her hair unspiralling from her bun at an extraordinary pace. You see Rachel's sweatshirt, the one you'd finally had the courage to get rid of, wrapped around Lorelai's careless shoulders.

That's the end of not thinking, the end of only feeling. But your body doesn't recognize that any more this morning than it did last night and Rachel is riding you so hard that it feels like you're going to fall right through the floor. She emits a high, keening noise as you pull down on the silk and make a final upward surge into her.

You hear her panting as your mind clicks off, again lost to the sensation disassembling into darkness, but the last coherent thought you have is bitter and mournful.

_Rachel is not Lorelai._

She never will be, she wasn't last night and she won't be a month from now.

And you are starting to fear that nothing but Lorelai is _ever_ going to fit right and that's the one thing in your life that can't ever be.

You feel like crying.

_now_

Lorelai is sitting on the edge of your bed, a mortified look on her face when you return with a cup of coffee.

You stand in your doorway for a moment, trying to take it in, trying to process the fact that Lorelai Gilmore is in _your_ shirt on _your_ bed in _your_ apartment as _your_ girlfriend ... right after she just paraded in front of your entire morning crowd without her pants on.

It is surreal. It is blissful.

"Coffee!" you say, trying to not turn your nose up at the word, shaking a cup in her direction, hoping it will bring a small smile to her face.

It doesn't work. Lorelai grimaces and says the one thing you were certain you'd never hear come out of her mouth. "I don't want it!" She sighs dramatically and before you can react has crawled back under the comforter she stole from you all of last night.

What else can you do? Trying to supress the grin that won't stay off your face you set down the coffee cup and walk over to the bed, sitting down next to the lump in your comforter that is Lorelai.

"Lorelai," you begin, using your soothing voice

"Luke! They saw me without my pants and they think I'm some kind of diner hussy and now everyone will talk about it and it's going to turn into something everyone discusses at a town meeting and no one believes," Her voice sounds distressed and it occurs to you that this is something she might genuinely worry about.

"Lorelai," you cut her off "I don't care what anyone else in this town or the whole damn universe thinks or believes or says. All I care about is you."

You hear a few muffled breaths from underneath the comforter and then you see her stick just her eyes over the top and look at you. If you didn't know any better, you'd think she looks afraid.

"I'm completely serious, Lorelai."

The moment of fear in her eyes is replaced by some emotion you can't name, but it makes you feel as if you have said the perfect thing.

She tosses the comforter aside in one swift motion and gives you the smile you are already starting to figure out means that all things dangerous and possible are about to occur.

"Well, since we know that things downstairs are taking care of themselves and it's definitely too early for any rational human being to be out of bed..."

She trails off and arches her eyebrows. Looking at her, spread out on your bed, her hair a mess on the pillow behind her head, her arms reaching up for you, all while wearing _one of your shirts_ is almost more than you can take. You lean into Lorelai's arms as every muscle in your body tenses with anticipation.

Unbuttoning your own shirt, pulling it from Lorelai's body (she's laughing, sighing, making noises you can't put into words.) and kissing her collarbone, the base of her neck, the tops of shoulders makes you feel as if you're moving through molasses on a cold morning.

But Lorelai keeps reaching up to you, pushing her hips towards you, grabbing your upper arms, opening herself up to your touch. When you put your hand between her legs, she is still arching forward, into your palm. She's ready for you, from just kissing and flirting and phantom touches around her skin, she's ready for you, wet and welcoming, as ready for you as you feel yourself ready for her.

She _wants_ this, she does, and it shouldn't come as a shock to you anymore, not after all summer on the phone, certainly not after last night, but you're still taken aback. Lorelai wants this, _she wants you._

You want her too.

Burying your face in the crook of her neck you gasp at the shock of how easy it is to slide into her, to have her bring her hips up to meet you, pressing your bodies so close together that it feels as if, in this moment, you are one skin.

You can't think. In your mind there is only one word. _"Lorelai."_ It isn't even really a word or a fully formed thought. It's more about everything this woman has been to you, more about everything you hope she will yet be.

"Luke."

It is not until you hear her make a noise that is halfway between a laugh and moan and then punctuate it with your name that you realize that you've had your last thought out-loud.

Her voice, that single word, sounds rich with possibility. And just before you lose yourself in the sensation that is Lorelai Gilmore it occurs to you that she just might be thinking all the same things you're thinking, dreaming the same dreams, and finally realizing that you've always been there for her, and always will be.

Everything feels right, the universe makes sense, the stars are in their place in heaven and you, Luke Danes, have finally come home.

You feel like crying.


End file.
